Copenhagen - Michael Frayn [6]
Bohr Are you telling me that I’m being protected by your friends in the Embassy?
Heisenberg What I’m saying, in case Weizsäcker failed to make it clear, is that you would find congenial company there. I know people would be very honoured if you felt able to accept an occasional invitation.
Bohr To cocktail parties at the Germany Embassy? To coffee and cakes with the Nazi plenipotentiary?
Heisenberg To lectures, perhaps. To discussion groups. Social contacts of any sort could be helpful.
Bohr I’m sure they could.
Heisenberg Essential, perhaps, in certain circumstances.
Bohr In what circumstances?
Heisenberg I think we both know.
Bohr Because I’m half-Jewish?
Heisenberg We all at one time or another may need the help of our friends.
Bohr Is this why you’ve come to Copenhagen? To invite me to watch the deportation of my fellow-Danes from a grandstand seat in the windows of the German Embassy?
Heisenberg Bohr, please! Please! What else can I do? How else can I help? It’s an impossibly difficult situation for you, I understand that. It’s also an impossibly difficult one for me.
Bohr Yes. I’m sorry. I’m sure you also have the best of intentions.
Heisenberg Forget what I said. Unless …
Bohr Unless I need to remember it.
Heisenberg In any case it’s not why I’ve come.
Margrethe Perhaps you should simply say what it is you want to say.
Heisenberg What you and I often used to do in the old days was to take an evening stroll.
Bohr Often. Yes. In the old days.
Heisenberg You don’t feel like a stroll this evening, for old times’ sake?
Bohr A little chilly tonight, perhaps, for strolling.
Heisenberg This is so difficult. You remember where we first met?
Bohr Of course. At Göttingen in 1922.
Heisenberg At a lecture festival held in your honour.
Bohr It was a high honour. I was very conscious of it.
Heisenberg You were being honoured for two reasons. Firstly because you were a great physicist …
Bohr Yes, yes.
Heisenberg … and secondly because you were one of the very few people in Europe who were prepared to have dealings with Germany. The war had been over for four years, and we were still lepers. You held out your hand to us. You’ve always inspired love, you know that. Wherever you’ve been, wherever you’ve worked. Here in Denmark. In England, in America. But in Germany we worshipped you. Because you held out your hand to us.
Bohr Germany’s changed.
Heisenberg Yes. Then we were down. And you could be generous.
Margrethe And now you’re up.
Heisenberg And generosity’s harder. But you held out your hand to us then, and we took it.
Bohr Yes No! Not you. As a matter of fact. You bit it.
Heisenberg Bit it?
Bohr Bit my hand! You did! I held it out, in my most statesmanlike and reconciliatory way, and you gave it a very nasty nip.
Heisenberg I did?
Bohr The first time I ever set eyes on you. At one of those lectures I was giving in Göttingen.
Heisenberg What are you talking about?
Bohr You stood up and laid into me.
Heisenberg Oh … I offered a few comments.
Bohr Beautiful summer’s day. The scent of roses drifting in from the gardens. Rows of eminent physicists and mathematicians, all nodding approval of my benevolence and wisdom. Suddenly, up jumps a cheeky young pup and tells me that my mathematics are wrong.
Heisenberg They were wrong.
Bohr How old were you?
Heisenberg Twenty.
Bohr Two years younger than the century.
Heisenberg Not quite.
Bohr December 5th, yes?
Heisenberg 1.93 years younger than the century.
Bohr To be precise.
Heisenberg No—to two places of decimals. To be precise, 1.928 …7 …6 …7 …1 …
Bohr I can always keep track of you, all the same. And the century.
Margrethe And Niels has suddenly decided to love him again, in spite of everything. Why? What happened? Was it the recollection of that summer’s day in Göttingen? Or everything? Or nothing at all? Whatever it was, by the time we’ve sat down to dinner the cold ashes have started